Chehade to join World Economic Forum

Outgoing ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade is to join the World Economic Forum as a senior advisor, WEF announced today.
The person he will advise is Klaus Schwab, WEF’s founder and executive chairman, according to a press release.
WEF is the Switzerland-based non-profit think tank famous for its annual summits in Davos, where world leaders and super-rich businesspeople congregate in order to shed their skin-suits and plot world domination whilst in their true reptilian form.
Chehade, it seems, will be primarily involved in the “Global Challenge Initiative on the Future of the Internet”, a WEF project (pdf) focusing on internet governance, access, cybercrime and so on.
This year’s Davos meeting has been taking place this week. Much of the attention has been focused on pressing humanitarian and economic issues such as the Syrian refugee crisis and European Union immigration policy.
Chehade announced he was leaving ICANN in May last year.
He’s suspected of suffering from ICANN burnout after just a few short, albeit transformational, years on the job.
He said in August he’s taking on a role with Boston-based private equity firm ABRY Partners.
Last month, he became a joint founder of the “Wuzhen Initiative”, a China-led internet governance talking shop along the same lines as the NetMundial Initiative.
His successor has yet to be named, but given Chehade is leaving in March the announcement cannot be too many weeks away.
He starts at WEF April 1.

2 Comments Tagged: ICANN, world economic forum

Pirates lose privacy rights under new ICANN rules

People operating piracy web sites would have a harder time keeping their personal information private under new ICANN rules.
ICANN’s GNSO Council last night approved a set of recommendations that lay down the rules of engagement for when trademark and copyright owners try to unmask Whois privacy users.
Among other things, the new rules would make it clear that privacy services are not permitted to reject requests to reveal a domain’s true owner just because the IP-based request relates to the content of a web site rather than just its domain name.
The recommendations also contain safeguards that would allow registrants to retain their privacy if, for example, their safety would be at risk if their identities were revealed.
The 93-page document (pdf) approved unanimously by the Council carries a “Illustrative Disclosure Framework” appendix that lays out the procedures in some depth.
The framework only covers requests from IP owners to proxy/privacy services. The GNSO was unable to come up with a similar framework for dealing with, for example, requests from law enforcement agencies.
It states flatly:

Disclosure [of the registrant’s true Whois details] cannot be refused solely for lack of any of the following: (i) a court order; (ii) a subpoena; (iii) a pending civil action; or (iv) a UDRP or URS proceeding; nor can refusal to disclose be solely based on the fact that the Request is founded on alleged intellectual property infringement in content on a website associated with the domain name.

This fairly explicitly prevents privacy services (which in most cases are registrars) using the “we don’t regulate content” argument to shoot down disclosure requests from IP owners.
Some registrars were not happy about this paragraph in early drafts, yet it remains.
Count that as a win for the IP lobby.
However, the new recommendations spend a lot more time giving IP owners a quite strict set of guidelines for how to file such requests in the first place.
If they persistently spam the registrar with automated disclosure requests, the registrar is free to ignore them. They can even share details of spammy IP owners with other registrars.
The registrar is also free to ignore requests that, for example, don’t give the exact or representative URL of an alleged copyright infringement, or if the requester has not first attempted to contact the registrant via an email relay service, should one be in place.
The registrant also gets a 15-day warning that somebody has requested their private details, during which, if they value their privacy more than their web site, they’re able to relinquish their domain and remain anonymous.
If the registrant instead uses that time to provide a good reason why they’re not infringing the requester’s rights, and the privacy service agrees, the request can also be denied.
The guidelines would make it easier for privacy service operators to understand what their obligations are. By formalizing the request format, it should make it easier to separate legit requests from the spurious requests.
They’re even allowed to charge IP owners a nominal fee to streamline the processing of their requests.
While these recommendations have been approved by the GNSO Council, they need to be approved by the ICANN board before becoming the law of the ‘net.
They also need to pass through an implementation process (conducted by ICANN staff and GNSO members) that turns the recommendations into written procedures and contracts which, due to their complexity, I have a hunch will take some time.
The idea is that the rules will form part of an accreditation program for privacy/proxy services, administered by ICANN.
Registrars would only be able to use P/P services that agree to follow these rules and that have been accredited by ICANN.
It seems to me that the new rules may be quite effective at cracking down on rogue, “bulletproof” registrars that automatically dismiss piracy-based disclosure requests by saying they’re not qualified to adjudicate copyright disputes.

7 Comments Tagged: copyright, gnso, ICANN, piracy, ppsai, privacy, proxy, whois

ICANN confirms domain privacy is for all

Commercial entities will not be excluded from buying domain privacy services, ICANN’s GNSO Council has confirmed.
The Council last night voted unanimously to approve a set of recommendations that would make it compulsory for privacy and proxy services to be accredited by ICANN for the first time.
The recommendations govern among other things how privacy services are expected to behave when they receive notices of trademark or copyright infringement.
But missing is a proposal that would have prevented the use of privacy for “transactional” web sites, something which caused a great deal of controversy last year.
The newly adopted recommendations clearly state that nobody is to be excluded from privacy on these grounds.
The Council voted to adopt the final, 93-page report of the Privacy and Proxy Services Accreditation Issues (pdf) working group, which states:

Fundamentally, P/P services should remain available to registrants irrespective of their status as commercial or non-commercial organizations or as individuals. Further, P/P registrations should not be limited to private individuals who use their domains for non-commercial purposes.

The minority view that web sites that process financial transactions should not be able to use privacy came from intellectual property, anti-abuse and law enforcement community members.
However, opponents said it would infringe the privacy rights of home business owners, bloggers, political activists and others.
It could even lead to vicious “doxing”-related crimes, such as “swatting”, where idiots call in fake violent crime reports against rivals’ home addresses, some said.
It also turned out, as we revealed last November, that 55% of US presidential candidates operate transactional web sites that use privacy on their domains.
Two separate registrar initiatives, one backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, started letter-writing campaigns that resulted in over 20,000 comments being received on the the PPSAI’s initial report last July.
Those comments are acknowledged in the PPSAI final report that the GNSO Council just approved.
The adopted recommendations (which I’ll get into in a separate article) still have to be approved by the ICANN board of directors and have to undergo an implementation process that puts the rather broad policies into concrete processes and procedures.

6 Comments Tagged: gnso, ICANN, ppsai, privacy, proxy, whois

Cars gTLD launch clears $1 million in EAP

There was a small turn-out for the premium launch of .cars, .car and .auto gTLDs, but the registry says it cleared over $1 million in revenue.
The three gTLDs are run by Cars Registry, a venture between Uniregistry and XYZ.com.
They all finished their pricey Early Access Periods yesterday and are due to enter general availability today.
The EAP started January 12 with prices of $45,000 per domain. In GA, they won’t cost you less than $2,000.
While zone files show almost no new domains appearing between January 12 and today — three or four per domain at most — Uniregistry CEO Frank Schilling said EAP was a “success”.
“More than 100 dealers and brands took advantage of sunrise and EAP,” he said.
It appears there are a few dozen domains not appearing in zone files yet.
The three gTLDs combined have brought in over $1 million during EAP, Schilling said.

4 Comments Tagged: .auto, .car, .cars, cars registry, eap, new gTLDs, sunrise, uniregistry, xyz.com

Instagram paid Chinese cyberquatter $100,000 for instagram.com, Facebook lawsuit reveals

Facebook has sued a Chinese cybersquatter for trying to renege on a five-year-old deal that saw it buy the domain instagram.com for $100,000.
The lawsuit, filed in California last week, claims that a family of known cybersquatters, based in Guangdong, is trying to have the purchase invalidated by a Chinese court.
The company, which acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, wants the court to rule that the domain deal was legal, preventing the cybersquatters retaking control of the domain.
Photo-sharing app Instagram launched in October 2010 using the domain instagr.am.
At that time, instagram.com was owned by a US-based domain investor, but it was bought by Zhou Weiming about a month later.
Zhou, Facebook says, was the now-dead father of three of the people it is suing, and the husband of the fourth.
When Zhou purchased the domain, Instagram had become wildly popular, well on the way to hitting the million-user mark in December 2010.
Instagram had applied for the US trademark on its name in September 2010, less than a month before its launch.
The company made the decision to pay $100,000 for the domain in January 2011.
The Whois information for instagram.com changed from Zhou Weiming to Zhou Murong, apparently his daughter, around about the same time, though the registrant email address did not change.
The purchase was processed by Sedo, according to a copy of the deal filed as evidence (pdf).
Now, Murong’s mother and sisters are suing her and Instagram in China, claiming she did not have the authority to sell the domain, according to Facebook’s complaint.
Facebook claims the Chinese suit is a “sham” and that the whole Zhou family is acting in concert.
The company wants the California court to declare that the sale was valid, and that registrar MarkMonitor should not be forced to transfer the domain back to the Zhous.
Facebook in 2014 won a 22-domain UDRP case against Murong Zhou, related to typos of its Instagram trademark.
Read the full California complaint as a PDF here.

6 Comments Tagged: cybersquatting, facebook, instagram, udrp

.security names priced at $3,000, .theatre at $750

XYZ.com may be best known for its budget .xyz gTLD, but its portfolio is increasingly leaning toward the super-premium end of the industry price range.
The company entered Early Access Period with its .security, .protection and .theatre gTLDs today, and they ain’t cheap.
.security and .protection are expected to carry retail prices of $3,000 a year, when they hit general availability a week from now.
Today, they’re $65,000 apiece, with the price reducing to $35,000, $15,000, $8,750 and $5,000 over the coming days.
Meanwhile, .theatre starts at $64,000, going down to $32,000, $14,000, $7,000 and $4,000 before finally settling at the GA RRP of $750.
All three gTLDs were acquired by XYZ.com from other applicants.
That was also the case for .cars, .car and .auto, which XYZ runs in a joint venture with Uniregistry, where retail prices are roughly $2,500.
In terms of competition, .security and .protection are probably up against .trust, while .theatre may well find itself in competition with .tickets, which has made inroads in Broadway.

5 Comments Tagged: .protection, .theatre, eap, new gTLDs, security, xyz.com

.boston was a “distraction”, says gTLD seller

The Boston Globe newspaper decided to offload the gTLD after its new owners decided it was a “distraction”.
That’s according to a report yesterday in the newspaper itself.
Last week, it was announced that Minds + Machines, which already runs a handful of geo-gTLDs, is acquiring the .boston contract for an undisclosed sum.
Today, the Globe reports that its owners thought .boston would be “a distraction from the Globe’s central business of providing information through its print and online outlets”.
“The .boston domain business was inherited by the current management team and is not perceived as core to the mission of supporting the highest quality journalism in the region,” it quotes the Globe’s VP of marketing as saying.
The newspaper was acquired by Boston Red Sox owner John Henry in 2013, a year after the .boston application was filed, according to the report.
The acquisition, which sees M+M buy 99% the Globe subsidiary in control of the gTLD registry agreement, is subject to ICANN approving the contract reassignment.

2 Comments Tagged: .boston, acquisition, boston globe, ICANN, m+m, new gTLDs, reassignment

Does .tickets have the ultimate anti-cybersquatting system?

I’ve never seen anything like this before.
.tickets gTLD registry Accent Media has launched an anti-cybersquatting measure that lets the world know who is trying to register what domain name a whole month before the domain is allowed to go live.
The service, at domains.watch, is currently only being used by .tickets, but it seems to be geared up to accept other TLDs too.
A spokesperson said the site soft-launched a couple months ago.
Today, if you want to register a .tickets domain name, you have a choice of two processes — “fast-track” or “standard”.
Fast-track is for organizations with trademarks matching their names. It take five days for the trademark to be verified and the domain to go live.
Standard-track applications, however, are published on domains.watch for 30 days before the the registration is fully processed (under the registry hood, the domain are kept in “Pending Create” status).

During that 30 days, anyone with a trademark they believe would be infringed by the domain may file a challenge against the registration. They have to pay a fee to do so.
The would-be registrant can counter by showing their own rights. If they have no documented rights, the challenger gets the name instead.
“Rights” in the case of .tickets means a trademark or evidence of use of a mark in a ticketing-related context.
While it’s certainly not unusual in the industry for restricted TLDs to manually vet their registrants before processing a registration, I’ve never before come across a registry that does it all in public, allowing basically anyone — or, at least, anyone who is willing to pay the challenge fee — to challenge any registration.
Can you imagine what the domain world would be like if this kind of system were commonplace across a range of TLDs?
A lot of people outside the industry — particularly in security, I fancy — would love it.

12 Comments Tagged: .tickets, accent media, cybersquatting, trademarks

Uniregistry beats Donuts to .shopping, but .shop still in play

Uniregistry has emerged as the successful registry-to-be of .shopping from the convoluted .shop/.shopping new gTLD contention set.
Donuts, the only competing applicant for the string, withdrew its application late last week.
As we previously reported, the .shop/.shopping contention sets were joined at the hip due to a bizarre string similarity challenge, making the scheduled auction very complex.
But Donuts and Uniregistry seem to have come to a private arrangement about .shopping, outside of the ICANN auction process, making .shop a straightforward nine-way fight.
Donuts tells me the auction, in which it is participating, is still scheduled for January 27.

4 Comments Tagged: .shop, .shopping, auctions, donuts, new gTLDs, uniregistry

Afilias $10 million court win slashed by judge

A US judge has dramatically reduced a $10 million ruling Afilias won against Architelos in a trade secrets case.
Architelos, which a jury decided had misappropriated trade secrets from Afilias in order to build its patented NameSentry domain security service, may even be thrown a lifeline enabling it to continue business.
A little over a week ago, the judge ordered (pdf) that the $10 million judgment originally imposed by the jury should be reduced to $2 million.
That won’t be finalized, however, until she’s ruled on an outstanding injunction demanded by Afilias.
The judge said in court that the original jury award had been based on inflated Architelos revenue projections.
The company has made only around $300,000 from NameSentry subscriptions since launch, and its sales pipeline dried up following the jury’s verdict in August.
The service enables TLD registries to track and remediate domain abuse. It was built in part by former Afilias employees.
Afilias has a similar in-house system, not available on the open market, used by clients of its registry back-end business.
Even a reduced $2 million judgment is a bit too rich for Architelos, which is desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy, according to court documents.
But the judge seems to be considering an injunction that would enable Architelos to continue to exist.
It may even be permitted to sell NameSentry, as long as it gives almost a third of the product’s revenue to Afilias for up to five years or until the $2 million is paid off.
The injunction might also grant joint ownership of the disputed patents to the two companies, allowing them to jointly profit from the technology.
This has all yet to be finalized, however, and Afilias can always appeal whatever injunction the judge comes up with.
It emerged in court earlier this month that Architelos offered to give full ownership of its patent, along with NameSentry itself, to Afilias in order to settle the suit, but that Afilias refused.
Afilias is also suing Architelos over the same matters in Canada, but that case is progressing much more slowly.

Comment Tagged: afilias, architelos, namesentry, new gTLDs, patents, security, trade secrets